The industrial laser processing of metal workpieces has rapidly developed in recent years as a result of technical advances in this field. With this development, the expectations and demands on the workpieces to be processed have continuously increased and customers are demanding increasingly individual, complex products or workpieces within increasingly short production times. This also involves workpieces to be produced more frequently having a complex structure with at least two or more different workpiece thicknesses or individual workpieces each having a defined thickness having to be produced in increasingly small batches in a shorter time and with high cutting quality.
In order to cut a workpiece with a comparatively large thickness (e.g., thick metal sheets), a comparatively large focal diameter of the processing laser beam is generally desirable so that the cutting gap is sufficiently wide that slag produced during the workpiece processing operation can be blown out. In contrast, during the processing of workpieces with comparatively small thicknesses (e.g., thin metal sheets), in particular for rapid laser cutting, a comparatively small focal diameter is desirable.
However, continuous refitting of laser processing machines (e.g., from machines with small focal diameters to machines with comparatively large focal diameters) is generally undesirable owing to the disproportionately high level of complexity often needed to comply with the above-described demands on the workpiece production. The gradual processing of a workpiece with different thicknesses firstly on a first laser processing machine (e.g., a laser cutting machine with a small focal diameter) and subsequently (e.g., after interim transfer of the workpiece) on a second laser processing machine (e.g., with a comparatively large focal diameter) also does not represent a more economical alternative.